As network communications among multiple computing devices have become ubiquitous, the quantity of information available via such network communications has increased exponentially. For example, the ubiquitous Internet and World Wide Web comprise information sourced by a vast array of entities throughout the world, including corporations, universities, individuals and the like. Such information is often marked, or “tagged”, in such a manner that it can be found, identified and indexed by services known as “search engines”. Even information that is not optimized for search engine indexing can still be located by services, associated with search engines, which seek out information available through network communications with other computing devices and enable a search engine to index such information for subsequent retrieval.
Due to the sheer volume of information available to computing devices through network communications with other computing devices, increasingly users turn to search engines to find the information they seek. Search engines enable users to search for any topic and receive, from this vast volume of information, identifications of specific information that is responsive to, or associated with, the users' queries, often presented in order of relevance or importance to the user. To sort through the vast amounts of information that is available, and timely provide useful responses to users' queries, search engines employ a myriad of mechanisms to optimize the identification and retrieval of responsive and associated information.
Unfortunately, search engines are, by definition, reactive entities in that they only provide information in response to an initial action seeking such information in the first place. Simply put, if a user does not realize that they are lacking specific information that may be of benefit to them, then all of the information that is available through the search engine will remain unused by such a user, and, thereby will not be of any use to that user.